… I bring you a of ‘clip show‘ of sorts: excerpts from past entries of this blog, but with a slight twist. For, unlike your textbook clip show, I’ll be drawing from episodes you’re probably unfamiliar with. After all, while this is my 500th piece, this is our blog’s eight hundred and fortieth: quite enough of a tangle to get hopelessly disoriented in.
I have culled from the earliest days of WOT?, when we had precious few readers — each one precious! Five picks from the lot seems a reasonable ratio: neatly one per hundred.
While many of our posts from those days have since, one way or another, found their audience (or vice versa), these dispatches have languished in obscurity — deservedly or not, who can say?
Here they are, in chronological order and everything:
This one was a gathering of English fantasy artist Patrick Woodroffe (1940-2014)’s covers for Warren Magazines. You may have seen his fabulous cover for Judas Priest’s 1976 LP Sad Wings of Destiny.
A ghoulish and gloriously fitting backup feature for Pat Mills’ unhinged Death Race 2020 (1995-96, Roger Corman’s Cosmic Comics). I collected them all so you don’t have to!
Incidentally, this is all you’ll be seeing of me this month — it’s not a case of burnout: I’m just furiously cobbling together this year’s Hallowe’en Countdown, and that takes time. Thanks for your patience and loyalty, and see you in October!
Death Race 2020 managed to be a pretty good series… for three issues (read ’em here!) The original creative combo was aces, three veterans from Brit SF institution 2000 AD, namely Pat Mills and Tony Skinner hatching the plots and Kevin O’Neill conveying them to visual glory. O’Neill scampered off after three issues (returning only to craft the series’ final cover), and things just weren’t the same without his sordid, madcap touch. It takes a special talent to depict compellingly *and* with a finely-tuned, subversive tone, this level of carnage and mayhem. Such talent, obviously, is ever in short, and possibly dwindling, supply.
But… we’re not here for the main feature. Buried in the back pages amidst the ads (mostly touting the alt-rock of the day) was a regular one-page hi-concept feature crafted by a succession of young (or young-ish) artistic iconoclasts. I suspect it was the fevered brainchild of former The Comics Journal managing editor Robert Boyd (1989-1990), also the editor of Death Race 2020. If this were Facebook, I’d show you my favourite example and move on to the next pretty shiny bauble. But through the pixie magic of blogging, I can afford to be utterly profligate and fling the whole delirious jumble your way. And so…
Story and art by Dave Cooper, from Death Race 2020 no. 1 (April, 1995).
Story and art by Pat Moriarty, from Death Race 2020 no. 2 (May, 1995).
Story and art by Bob Fingerman, from Death Race 2020 no. 3 (June, 1995).
Story and art by Jay Stephens, from Death Race 2020 no. 5 (August, 1995).
Story and art by Fábio Zimbres, from Death Race 2020 no. 6 (September, 1995). In these troubled days, I imagine many a Brazilian pines for the halcyon days of JK, faced with the reality of JB.
Story and art by Jaca Weiss and Robert Weiss, from Death Race 2020 no. 7 (October, 1995). For a look at some actual Rick Griffin art, look no further than here.
Story and art by Matthew Guest, from Death Race 2020 no. 8 (November, 1995).
To wit… a prime example of the aforementioned. By now, I’d like to think that most people have come to realize that the gendered driver question is a complex and fraught one. Here are some relevant statistics, if that’s your thing. You guessed it, things aren’t fair.
Drive safe, folks, and keep your eyes and mind on the road. The rest of us will appreciate it.
« Technology is constantly improving our lives. Look at the cellular telephone. Just ten years ago, virtually nobody was able to get into a car crash caused by trying to steer and dial at the same time; today, people do this all the time. » — Dave Barry
Who's Out There? 